Unto Caesar
Page 22
CHAPTER XXII
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his lifefor his friends."--ST. JOHN XV. 13.
No doubt that for that first tense moment all thought of treachery, ofthe conspiracy, of the imperium and even of Dea Flavia, was absent fromthe young man's mind.
It must have come upon him suddenly then and there that his life was nowin almost hopeless jeopardy. He was unarmed, and all around him thesmooth marble walls of the arena rose, polished and straight, to aheight of at least twelve feet, to the row of niches which alone mightafford him shelter. From the bases of the fluted columns the iron ringsto which the silken ladders had previously been attached, now hung at anunattainable height: the narrow ledge--four feet from the ground--hadceased to be a stepping-stone to safety.
All this, of course, came to him in a flash, as does to a dying man,they say, the varied pictures of his life. Hortensius Martius, in thatone flash, realised that he was a doomed man, that he had been trappedinto this death-trap, and that nothing now but a miracle stood betweenhim and a hideous death.
Men up above in the tribunes held their breath; some women began towhimper with excitement. But the man and the panther stood for a momenteye to eye. No longer the hunted and the hunter, but the hungry beast ofthe desert and his certain prey. The baffled creature, tantalised withthe blood of his other victims, was ready to satiate its lust at last.
There was a moment of absolute silence, while two tiny golden eyes,measured the distance for a leap.
The young man now, with the cunning born of a mad instinct for life, waswaiting with bent knees, body slightly leaning forward and eyes fixedupon the brute. He had unwound the cloak from round his arm and held itin front of him like a shield. The man and the beast watched one anotherthus for a few seconds, and to many those few seconds seemed like aneternity.
Then with a snarl the panther bounded forward. The man held his groundfor the space of one second, and as the brute landed within an arm'slength of him, quick as lightning he threw his cloak right in its face.Then he began to run. The panther, entangled in the folds of the cloak,savage and snarling, was tearing it to pieces, but Hortensius ran andran, driven by the blind sense of self-preservation. He ran and ran thewhole length of the arena, skirted the oval at the eastern end, andstill continued to run, with elbows firmly held to his hips and withswift winged steps that made no sound in the sand.
But already the creature, realising that again it was being cheated,started in pursuit. With leaps and bounds that seemed erratic andpurposeless, it gradually diminished the distance between itself and therunning man. Once it alighted on the outstanding branch of a gnarledtree, then from thence it took shelter in a clump of shrubs, then acrossthe stream, swimming to the opposite shore; for the running man hadrounded the oval and was now swiftly coming this way. Here in the tallgrass it paused--cowering--once more on the watch.
And Hortensius, while he ran so blindly along, had failed to noticewhere his enemy lay hiding.
"In the grass!" shouted a dozen voices.
"There!"
"On ahead!"
"Further on!"
"No! no! Not there! Not there!"
There was little exquisiteness left in the young man now. It was but afew moments since he had stepped smiling into the arena, kicking asidethe rose-leaves which enthusiastic hands had thrown in his path. It wasbut some minutes since he had begun to run, and now the perspiration waspouring from his body, his face was as grey as the sand of the arena,the fear of death had raised the death-sweat on his brow.
His breath came and went hot and panting through his nostrils, his eyes,dilated with terror, were vainly searching for the cowering enemy.
Once more he turned to run. The panther seemed to be playing with him. Adozen times it could have reached him, a dozen times it bounded to oneside, giving his prey another chance to run, another short respite forthe agony of despair.
Men, women and children screamed with excitement. No longer did theycheer the handsome young patrician, no longer did they throw roses athis feet. They shouted to him to run because they knew that running wasno use. They urged the panther to leap because they fanned its rage withtheir screams.
"Habet! Habet!" they shouted with every bound of the ferocious creature.
"Habet! Habet!" now that Hortensius at last paused in his run.
He stood quite still for a veil had descended over his eyes. The wholearena began to spin and to dance before him, the marble columns weretwisted awry, thousands upon thousands of distorted faces grinnedhideously upon him. Over the trees and the grass and the stream therewas a film of red, the colour of blood, and through this film--whichgrew thicker and thicker as he gazed--he saw nothing but just oppositeto him, across the width of the arena, towering high above everythingaround, the tall figure of Dea Flavia with her white dress fallingstraight from the shoulders, her fair hair crowned with diamonds, herface white as her gown and her lips parted as if uttering a cry ofhorror.
The next moment that cry--it was a woman's cry--did rend the air from,end to end of the gigantic enclosure, and the cry was echoed andre-echoed by thousands and thousands of throats, as the panther, takingsteady aim, leaped straight for the man.
The noise became deafening: men, women, children, everyone screamed, andright through this whirling orgy of sound a voice was shouting, strongand mighty as that of Jupiter when he sends his decrees thundering forthinto the air.
"By his throat, Hortensius! By his throat, and I'll at him whilst hepants!"
Hortensius put out his hands with a last instinctive sense ofself-preservation. The mighty voice rang in his ear, it reverberatedthrough the hot noonday air, and clanged against the copper gates as ifa powerful arm had smitten them with the axe of Jove.
The man saw the beast's leap, felt the hot breath in his face, felt thetwo yellow eyes gleaming on him like burning suns, and his ears buzzedwith the din of thousands of shrieks; then he suddenly felt himselfuplifted, whilst an agonised roar from the throat of a wounded beastoverfilled the seething cauldron of sound.
The praefect of Rome was standing in the arena now, and in his strongarms lifted high above his head he held the swooning man, whilst somefew paces away the panther was lying prone, with blood streaming fromits quivering jaws.
It had all happened so suddenly that no one afterwards could say how itoccurred. But there were those who retained a vision of the whole thingand afterwards shared their impressions with others.
Everyone recollected when my lord Hortensius first entered the arena andthe iron gates closed in behind him, that a general feeling of horrorfell upon the entire public when it realised that all means of safety,all chance of escape had been removed with those silken ladders, andthat the young patrician had in truth been left at the mercy of apowerful brute, goaded to madness through baffled desire for blood.
At that same moment the praefect of Rome disappeared from the imperialtribune, and the terrible scene between the hunting beast and the huntedman had begun.
Time for the man to run round the arena! Time for the brute to stalk andplay with its prey! Time, it seems, for the praefect of Rome to make hisway from the imperial tribune to the east end of the arena, where wasstationed the city guard of which he had full control!
A few precious seconds in making the soldiers understand what he wanted,a few more seconds to command them to obey for they stood as a phalanxagainst the gate, thinking the praefect mad in desiring to enter thearena--a few more seconds and Taurus Antinor was at last in the arena,shouting to the hunted man to have at the brute with his hands.
But Hortensius was weak from exhaustion brought on by a life of luxuryand idleness and by the excitement of the last two days. He put out twofeeble hands, and the panther was already on the leap.
And by that time Taurus Antinor was between him and the brute. With ablow of his hard fists--fashioned in far off Northern lands--and withthe strength that is given to the barbarians of that sea-washed shore,he had drawn blood f
rom the creature's jaw and sent it rolling back onits haunches, momentarily dazed.
Only momentarily, however, whilst two hundred thousand throats yelled inunison:
"Habet! Habet! Habet!"
A precious moment that! With a maddened beast, a swooning man and noarms save a pair of fists, hard as iron, made with a hand slender andsupple like the finest tempered steel.
And while the panther fell back roaring, and before it could prepare fora new spring, Taurus Antinor had seized the swooning man. It was histurn to run now, for he had but a few seconds in which to save the lifeof his bitterest foe.
Straight to the walls of the arena did he run, and his voice was heardspeaking loudly and commandingly:
"The arcade, man! Rouse thyself! The arcade! The rings in the columns!Quick!"
It needed the strength of a bullock to accomplish the deed: that, or thestrength which comes from unbendable human will. The man, onlyhalf-conscious, returned to his senses by the force of that same will.The instinct of life was strongest in the end, and when Taurus Antinorleapt upon the ledge and hoisted Hortensius' body high up above hishead, the young man, with the final effort borne of hope and built upondespair, reached up and caught one of the massive rings imbedded in thebases of the fluted columns.
For a few seconds he remained suspended, his body swinging against themarble wall, whilst the public cheered with an enthusiasm that knew nobounds. From below the praefect helped to push the feeble body up, thenanother jerk, a pull upwards, a push, and Hortensius Martius had foundsafety in one of the niches of the arcade.
"Hail to the praefect of Rome! Hail!" came in a continuous, thunderousroar from every corner of the arena, even as with a sudden bound theblack panther had sprung upon Taurus Antinor, and, catching himunawares, had felled him to the ground.